Suzanne Harrington: Could gutsy Stormy Daniels be the the one to take Trump down?

"Not all heroines wear capes: this one wears stripper shoes, her own brand of perfume, and an aura of such buoyant fearlessness she’s like a pornified Joan of Arc."

Stormy Daniels speaks during a ceremony for her receiving a City Proclamation and Key to the City in West Hollywood, Calif. AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File

Could it be that an adult film performer with a made-up name is the one to save America?

It might sound implausible, but as the US lives through its hallucinogenic cheese dream where anything can (and does) happen, can the decimation unleashed by a reality TV star be reclaimed by a porn star?

Not all heroines wear capes: this one wears stripper shoes, her own brand of perfume (Truth – ‘gender neutral, pheromone infused’), and an aura of such buoyant fearlessness she’s like a pornified Joan of Arc.

Stormy Daniels has become an unlikely beacon of hope, given how the trials for Trump’s actual crimes (inciting a riot, storing classified documents in his Florida bathroom, plotting to overturn election results) are unlikely to be concluded before the election. She’s all they’ve got.

The more the legal suits try to denigrate Stormy (“Only my mother and the IRS call me Stephanie and I hate them both”), the harder she comes back.

She feels “the most powerful when someone tries to take my power, to belittle or insult me”.

When Trump’s lawyer suggested she’s a money-grabbing self-promoter, she fired back, “not unlike Mr Trump.” It is the ex-president who flogs gold trainers and $59.99 (€55) bibles.

She has called sex with Trump, “The worst 90 seconds of my life”, and recounted how he told her (just before those 90 seconds) how she reminded him of his daughter. 

In interviews, asked if she was attracted to him, she shot back “would you be?”, and says those who vote for him “think God meant marriage to be between a man, his third wife, and several porn stars.”

Shagging a porn star is not a crime. Comparing them to your daughter is not a crime. Nor is cheating on your third wife who has just had a baby: Stormy’s worst 90 seconds happened when Barron Trump was four months old. 

Paying a porn star to stay quiet, then denying the encounter ever happened are also not crimes.

“It doesn’t offend me,” Stormy says cheerfully. “I mean, he also thinks climate change isn’t real.”

But falsifying your accounts, and declaring hush money as legal fees is definitely a crime.

Not a big one (not like insurrection, espionage, and conspiring to overturn election results) but it is this falsification which has led Trump to be so vividly and publicly eviscerated by a brave woman who takes her clothes off for a living.

A woman who has done more to expose not just intimate aspects of the onetime president that would make you barf your breakfast, but aspects of his character that show how he simply doesn’t have any.

Character, that is.

The real question is if America has enough character to send this criminal not to the White House again, but to jail.

Meanwhile, the world owes Stormy Daniels an overwhelming thank you, for her guts, her grit, her gumption, and her assertion that “karma will always bite you in the ass”.

Let’s hope it bites down hard before their next election.